TIL: middle click is paste?
this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2026
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the middle click is "paste selection" not "paste clipboard". those are 2 different things under *nix.
I personally use this constantly because you need the funtionality to quickly copy some text somewhere so often, it makes much more sense to not have to do: Select text, ctrl-c, move mouse, click text field, ctrl-v. much nicer to just: select text, move mouse, press middle button.
Thanks for the explanation. Actually a really nice feature.
oh that's good
Urgh, I use it at least 300 times a day.
From the other thread it seems it'll just be disabled by default, and enableable if wanted
Same, and I have done so since the mid-90's. It's muscle memory at this point.
From the other thread it seems it'll just be disabled by default, and enableable if wanted
Yeah, the title of this post seems to make that fairly clear. Still annoying though.
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Calling it a 'dumpster fire' is a bit dramatic.
I think I'd happily describe the multiple clipboard situation in Linux as a dumpster fire...
It's awkwardly 'solved' by clipboard managers merging clipboards but it's still wonky. Even for somebody who has been using Linux as a desktop for many years I occasionally find myself annoyed by it.
At this point I think I'd prefer "copy" to be an affirmative action rather than something that is done automatically. It makes pasting over existing text much easier.
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Middle click paste sucks, I keep accideE&4nry!NAnY6Yfntally activating it in the middle of my documents which is bad when I have st6SFMzZkTR7!b^yuff like passwords copied and don't notice, so good
No hunter2 in there, this is fake.
KDE and Gnome already have toggles for it, though Gnome's is in gnome-tweaks because Gnome hates exposed settings.
I'd support unifying behavior between toolkits and apps to provide users with a single point to set their preference, but I use this feature a hundred times a day. I'd also like it to remain the default; *nix desktops should have their own flavor instead of just copying Mac OS or Windows, and middle-click paste has been a part of that flavor for 40 years.
Damn, the amount of comments that didn't even read the full... title... Is reading comprehension getting this bad? Middle clic paste isn't getting removed, just being opt-in rather than opt-out, yet a bunch of commenters are up in arms "time to ditch firefox"...
Historically speaking, the gnome devs have made “disabled by default” the first step towards removing a feature everyone uses.
Historically speaking, from what I'm reading is that gnome devs have a history of bad decisions birthing forks here and there "fine, I'll do my own gnome, with blackjack and hookers" too, so I don't know how much weigh such a decision can have to be perfectly honnest.
Eh, gnome is the default on some of the biggest distributions in a time when apparently lots of people are trying Linux for the first time so there’s an outsized opportunity for their usual shenanigans to have consequences for the rest of us.
Which has happened a bunch of times in the past.
Half of them probably will. People are like that.
Many times, I have seen people switch tech because something is missing or has changed…and they switch to something that also does not have it. Boggles my mind.
On the other hand, the alternative they switch to may have other features that they like. If a particular option was what kept them using some program/DE/OS, why stay if it's gone?
Bravo Michael for continuing to farm bullshit drama with clickbait headlines on the most inane topics like "how my DE handles pasting text"
Does Gnome have a proper file picker yet?
You mean "once again". They had one, but screwed it up. Who the fuck types in the file save dialog expecting it to perform SEARCH?
For me it'his is one of the most useful features of Linux desktops and one of the main reasons I feel lost when I have to use Windows.
You won't lose it. They'll just turn it off by default for new users.
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Middle click paste is extremely useful. Why would anyone want to disable it?
It can conflict with some programs. A lot of modern design programs make use of middle click drags to move around a canvas.
That caused problems for me and it took me days to realize it was middle click paste causing the issue of all these random segments of text appearing all over the canvas.
It was also annoying to disable. I was using Chromium at the time and you simply cannot disable it, even by disabling it in Gnome. I had to use Firefox exclusively when using that design program since at least Firefox has a hidden option to disable it.
As a software developer working closely with designers this has caused some nightmare scenarios
There are programs that use the middle mouse button but also support pasting from clipboard. I've been annoyed at work plenty of times when I'm trying to translate across a canvas but accidentally paste a random node of text. Bonus points if it contains some kind of password that was still in your clipboard. I don't think it's a good default.
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And the keyboard shortcut for primary clipboard paste (Shift+Ins) is already gone from gtk.
- https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/352 (closed)
- https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1070518 (open)
- There's a nice Q/A on stackexchange: "Why does Shift+Insert paste from CLIPBOARD in some applications and PRIMARY in others?"
Ill be very happy when that day comes. Its one of the first things I need to search for how to disable every time i setup a new machine. To me, middle click has always been panning a canvas, and rectangle selecting text in editors. Its always super jarring having it paste text on new gnome machines
wait where does that get overridden? its going back a few years but when I was trying blender I used middle click paste and I don't think I had any issues with it affecting whatever middle click does by default in blender
As a newgen (derogatory), Id appreciate this. Middle click has always been auto-scroll to me and it takes a good search to figure out how to disable it on a new installation.
It's one of those things you either use constantly or not at all. Activating the feature intentionally and having it fail is irritating, but activating it unintentionally because you didn't know it was there could have serious consequences. I mean, I can even come up with cases where the wrong information being C&P'd accidentally into the wrong Web form could result in someone ending up dead.
Given the difference in stakes, "off by default" makes sense for this feature. I wouldn't call it a dumpster fire, though—more like a relic of a more innocent time.
I am used to using middle mouse button to move canvas in both Krita and Inkscape. I know that it would be a silly default to just use it for movement, but countless missclicks in LibreOffice are reason good enough to be at least ocassionally frustrated over the default.
No, secondary clipboard Ctrl+v paste is a Windowsism
I'm just lost why it's so hard baked into x11 instead of configurable. I don't want middle click to paste my selections. Yes I know x11 has some history and that it's a feature, I do not like that feature. I will never like that feature. I want to copy manually and paste manually.
I don't want my selections to be captured in a buffer.
TIL why that exists and how it works after using Linux for five years. I always wondered why someone put a function like pasting but not also copying text on the mouse and never realised you just have to select it since apparently there is a second clipboard. I wouldn't miss it but it also wasn't that big of a problem.
Not having that in Windows is jarring.
I don't use GNOME or Firefox though so maybe who cares.
I never used it, but TIL......
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